Alex R. Berezow informs us that not the American ‘red states’, but Italy, have become a troubled land for science. Some scientists were sent to prison for six years for failing to predict an earthquake; and I thought some of our Bronx juries and trial lawyers were bad, but they’ve never done anything quite like this!

In America, opposition to science is often blamed on the religious right. I doubt that that is the case in Italy. I’m not a Catholic, and I don’t know much about the Magisterium, but I rather doubt that the liability of science to predict earthquakes, and opposition to genetically modified foods, is part of the Catholic Magisterium – maybe during Lent, but not the rest of the time, surely! And, isn’t pasta the original processed food?